


Wurlitzer Jukebox

by PaxVobis



Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: Blood Kink, Concerts, Drabble Collection, Drunk Charles, Drunken Shenanigans, Episode: s02e07 Dethwedding, Ficlet Collection, Gen, M/M, Missing Scene, Multi, One Shot Collection, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Preklok, Random Song Challenge, Recovery, Songfic, Stuffed Toys, Vomiting, mosh pit, post-doomstar, trans pickles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-20 23:03:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10672608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaxVobis/pseuds/PaxVobis
Summary: Drabbles, short fics and oneshots, largely from Tumblr.Update: To Binge - Gorillaz, Toki and Nathan hurt/comfort and a large pile of stuffed toys post-Doomstar.





	1. Candidate - David Bowie / Pickles & CFO

_Having so much fun with the poisonous people_

_Spreading rumors and lies and stories they made up._

CANDIDATE

**DAVID BOWIE**

 

\- - - - -

 

Label event. Pickles dogged his way through the suited throngs, darting his glances up the chest of every red tie he faced, but none of them were their manager. “Charlie,” he muttered repetitively, like he could chant him into apparition, half to himself, half to another crowd of suits a foot taller than he. “Charles?” But nothing. Old sod was probably sloshed somewhere, ‘networking’ with some Harvard buddy boys…

“Offdensen?” He elbowed aside another grumbling Mad Men cunt, but no cigar, the tie was the wrong shade. The situation was getting desperate, throbbing in his head, and Pickles opened his mouth to yell, “CHARLIE – !” when he collided face first with a familiar suit chest, dry cleaning scent, faint cologne. Charles looked down at him, tipsy and bewildered, from a conversation with three other men.

“Chief! Boy, am I glad I found you! I reckon I lost my quaaludes down the back of the limo seat, can I get the keys off ya, dude?”

The manager ignored Pickles’ tugging at his suit lapel and reluctantly handed over the valet ticket. Close enough. Worked for an excuse to bug Charlie, anyway, and remind him that after all, Pickles was a better waste of Offdensen’s time than these ass suckers any night of the week.

 

\- - - - -


	2. Somebody Told Me - The Killers / Nathan & Pickles

_Somebody told me you had a boyfriend_

_Who looked like a girlfriend_

_That I had in February of last year…_

SOMEBODY TOLD ME

**THE KILLERS**

 

\- - - - -

 

Fuckin’ Wisconsin.  Nathan had finally freed himself of the old man that had been hounding him and Murderface, largely by replacing himself with Skwisgaar by grabbing the Swede by the shoulders as he passed towards the buffet and physically swapping him in to mild complaints - “Don’t - fuckin - he’s a fan.  You can’t look like a jerk in front of the fans!” - and then making himself scarce.

He needed to clear his head, and headed for the fire exit, stepping out into the cold Wisconsin night, muttering “Jesus fuck,” as he pulled his suit tighter around himself.  A dog barked in the distance.  The whole city was so flat, the buildings huddled low to the ground in their grey misery beneath the jeering half moon.  A young woman, who could have been Pickles’ cousin, was sat on the back step near his feet and vomiting, occasionally whimpering about getting puke on her pumps.  Nathan eyeballed her, and then decided he had no shame.  None at all.

“Hey,” he said gently, and stooped down beside her, “You okay?”

“I’m fine!” came the standard Wisconsin squawk.  Once it had driven Nathan crazy; now, it was met with warmth and familiarity, and he wondered, if he really tried, how many female members of Pickles’ family he could plow through.  Skwisgaar was certainly putting in a valiant effort.

“You don’t look fine.  I could, uhhhh… get you some water…?”  Nathan laid his huge hand on the woman’s back, then felt a familiar heaving sensation and almost instinctively took a handful of her long bleached blonde hair and held it out of her face as the puke dribbled out of her again.

“Jesus,” he said as she looked up at him, her eyes with that Wisconsin crazy to them under the moonlight, her made up face streaked in puke and tears.

“Hey,” said the woman deliriously, and hiccuped, “Aren’t yew… Nathan Explosion?”

She pointed at him, so he said, “…Yeah, I guess.”

The woman started to laugh, still pointing at him, sounding hysterical in her intoxication and peppered with hiccups.  “I’ve heard lats about yew, yew mutherfucker!”

“…Oh.”  Nathan shifted uncomfortably, letting her hair fall over her shoulder again.  “You, uh, Pickles’ cousin or something…?”

“ _No!_   Ew!”

Nathan smirked at this, amused.  “Oh, you fucked him then?” he said to dick around with her, and the woman’s laugh turned bitter.

“No.  I’ll leave that to yew… long story.  Long story!”  _Hiccup._   “We went ta highschool together.  Dated fer a bit. And thet’s all I’ll sey.”  The girl slumped over herself again, and Nathan frowned deeply at her cryptic words. 

He decided to give it one last shot, since she _wasn’t_ Pickles’ cousin, which meant he was practically immune from the drummer’s wrath once he found out Nathan had banged her.  Hell, it sounded like she’d been a cow in highschool - he’d probably understand the impulse.  Probably.  Delicately, he brushed her hair back over her shoulder, caressing the beauty salon special curls around his thick fingers, his gentle gaze searching for something to find smoking hot and not just trash city Tomahawk, Wisconsin, about her.

Roused by his tender touch, the woman looked up, smiling at Nathan drunkenly as her gaze took on a disbelieving, vicious edge.  “Are you _flirting_ with me?” she drawled, and Nathan withdrew his hand quickly, taken aback.

“Uh, no - maybe?”

“Jesus _fuck_.  Get up earlier, would ya?  I woulda thought, the way news travels round ‘ere, you’d know better,” she spat with a jeer, getting shakily to her feet.  Nathan looked up at her cluelessly, hoping she wouldn’t vomit on him, and she saw his stare and leaned forward, banging him on the forehead with her palm.  “I’m A Lesbian, Everybody Knows This!  Get bent, yew Fetlife motherfucker.”

And she left Nathan holding his head, crouched on the back stoop, as she stormed back in the fire exit to the party.  God damn small towns.  God damn.  God _damn_ and yet wait… wait.  _WAIT…_

 

_\- - - - -_

 


	3. Circle Pit / Nathan/Pickles

_Possessed! To the circle pit!_

 

\- - - - -

 

It was their first big show with Pickles and they were careening to the end of their set, Nathan with his boot up on the foldback and howling into a crowd rapidly tearing itself apart.  The lights of the little club were low, plunging the band into the dark, with a blinding white flash from a carefully positioned photographer shredding across them every few seconds.  In the snatches of white, Nathan – bellowing his guts out – had seen red.  He’d busted his throat again with a particularly violent roar and blood had sprayed over the mic and speckled his hand, but then it was dark again and he was too crazed to think about it.  Kept pushing.  The warm drops smattering the back of his hand, rolling over his knuckles.

The song ended sharply, only the last echoes of Murderface’s bass and the sound of Magnus scraping his pick up and down the low D of his guitar folding out and enveloping them. Nathan stood over the crowd, his chest heaving, and then he heard the snare fall over and a sharp little voice yell, _“NATHAN,”_ and Pickles catapulted straight onto his back.

Nathan had not expected that to happen, of all fucking things, and staggered straight off the stage and into the pit.  As he barrelled through the dark, the groping hands and elbows and blows, he could still feel Pickles’ weight and the drummer’s arms wrapped around his neck, and the heaving of his chest as he laughed hysterically in his ear, his fingers curled into Nathan’s shoulders.

They hit the bar together, half Nathan’s shoulder, half Pickles’ back, and the drummer slid off of Nathan and straight to the sticky, matted carpet.  Nathan tried to move back immediately, but Pickles stayed on the ground, a few slashes of white, freckled skin in the black blue lights of the club.

“Pickles!”  Nathan crouched over him, turning the drummer onto his side by his shoulder, and it was instantly obvious that he’d been totally winded, struggling to cease his laughter with no sound coming out just enough to stop the twinging muscles before they became too much.  He grabbed Nathan’s arm, and the singer was briefly jostled by the pit still seething behind them as Magnus – spurred on by Nathan’s disappearance – worked them into a frenzy with some dumbass chords, even Skwisgaar not bothering to join him.

Nathan tried to pull Pickles up, the drummer bracing his other arm against the bar, but then he raised his head and saw Nathan’s bloody face and fell back onto his ass again in shock. “Nate!” he squeaked, sat at the foot of the bar like a doll, and Nathan stooped again to pick him up.  But Pickles just laid his hands on Nathan’s shoulders, said, “Gimme a sec,” panting, and then looked him in the eye and said, “Nathan.”

“What.”  Nathan was concerned, and shoved his big dumb head under the edge of the bar, his hand hooked on the lip, to make sure Pickles was all right.  But the drummer, after a split second of confusion as Nathan shoved his face his way, took it as an invite and the next moment all Nathan was aware of was fans screaming at Magnus, hands around the back of his neck, and Pickles’ hot, sloppy mouth over his own.

Nathan kissed Pickles automatically for about a second, and then shoved him off and against the bar with both hands roughly.  “Knock it off with that gay shit,” he growled, and was savagely glad no one in the dark club could see his crazy blush as Pickles just laughed at him and grabbed his arm, finally allowing Nathan to pull him to his feet.

Nathan just looked away as the little guy fell against him, laughing something like “Sorry, couldn’t help it!  Got the bloodthirst, Nate!  Ha, fuck!”, and saw Magnus fucking drop his guitar unceremoniously onto the stage and step away again.  When he looked back at Pickles, the guy was leaning against the bar and holding someone else’s beer and smirking at him, blood smeared across his mouth as the lights came up again.

“Err, Pickles.”

Pickles blinked, saw what Nathan was looking at, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, pursing his lips at the blood that came away.  “Oh, shit,” he yapped, raising his voice over the music, then took in Nathan’s bloody visage, where it had drooled from his mouth foamy with spit on stage and down his maw.   Pickles grinned to see it.  “No stress, Nate.  Ya taste good ‘nuff.”

The younger man just rolled his eyes, giving Pickles a little push in the chest.  “Fuck Magnus, you’re the most screwed up person in this band,” he growled, and left Pickles to giggle it out as he tried to get the attention of the barperson and quell his torn throat with some fucking Heineken, that’d god damn do it.

 

\- - - - -

 


	4. Alabama Song - The Doors / Pickles/Magnus

_Oh show us the way to the next whiskey bar!_

_Oh, don’t ask why, oh, don’t ask why!_

_For if we don’t find the next whiskey bar,_

_I tell you we must die!  I tell you we must die!_

_I tell you, I tell you, I tell you we must die!_

ALABAMA SONG

**THE DOORS**

 

\- - - - -

 

The yellow streetlights of Ybor City, Tampa, bathed the dirty streets in a strange amber glow as the two dark figures wobbled in a vague direction arm in arm, devoid of logic and lurching across the pavement after one or the other’s drunken revelry. It was three in the morning on a Thursday, and Magnus and Pickles were only just getting started for their weekend, but the rest of the city was completely dead.  Magnus, barely holding Pickles up through his own giggles as the drummer sank, hysterical, to the pavement, was faintly aware of how pathetic this was, but couldn’t give a shit.

“Pickles. Pickles.  Get off the floor, buddy,” he snickered as Pickles descended to knee level and then crashed against his crotch, and Magnus honked with laughter and pushed him off.  “Fuck you, you god damn gaylord.  Get up. Get up!”

“They’re all closed, Maggie!” moaned Pickles, clutching at Magnus’ arms as he tried to lift him off the pavement and smothering his laughter, “They’ve seen us comin and they all cloooosed!”

“Naw buddy, there must be somewhere.  I know there is.  The Candyapple.  Or that lil’ gin joint…”  

Magnus snorted and finally succeeded in pulling Pickles to his feet, twining his arm with Pickles’ and looping it around the smaller man’s shoulders as they resumed their stagger. Down the street ahead of them they could hear footsteps approaching, although Magnus couldn’t see anything for how the hallucinogens made it all ripple.  But a figure emerged, a man in an overcoat, who walked past them, eyeing them, but determined not to interact.

“Hey!”  Pickles lurched, grabbing the guy by his overcoat, and the man pulled away defensively.  Pickles’ weak fingers slid easily off the wool.  “You know anywhere we can get a drink, dude?  We’re fuckin dyin of thirst out here!”

The man bleated something that sounded like ‘No’ and made a run for it.  Magnus’ mad grin over Pickles’ shoulder and splitting laughter as he darted away would haunt his dreams for some nights yet.

The two musicians collapsed against a building, the brickwork stinking of piss, Magnus holding Pickles tight to him impulsively as he laughed.  “You idiot!  You idiot! You brought out the fear of god in him!” and Pickles just sneered up at him, pulling out of his grip and staggering backwards.  Magnus was laughing too hard to open his eyes – until Pickles started to croon, that famous voice cracking with giggles as he tried to smother them and slurred to the distant moon.

_“Oh show us the way to the next whiskey bar!_

_Oh, don’t ask why, oh, don’t ask why!"_

Magnus raised his head, his smile strained with laughing too hard.  Pickles was swooning and holding his hand out to him, the other locked onto a streetlight, waiting for him to join in.

“You absolute treasure,” sneered the guitarist as he seized Pickles’ hand, and he had never been more glad to have met someone in his pitiful life.

 

\- - - - -

 


	5. To Binge - Gorillaz / Nathan/Toki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waiting in my room and I lock the door  
> I watch the colored animals cross the floor…

 

_Waiting in my room and I lock the door_

_I watch the colored animals cross the floor…_

TO BINGE

**GORILLAZ FEAT. LITTLE DRAGON**

 

\- - - - -

 

Toki was not the same when he returned.

Nathan tried not to let it bother him.  He’d won and he’d got Toki back and he’d got Abigail and no thanks to fucking Offdensen, who’d disappeared without a god damn trace.  Without the interfering record company their money was fine.  Toki was fine, sat in his room like a stuffed toy, blue buttons for eyes, back from the hospital and nonresponsive.  You know… fine.

Back to apathetic stories.  To hell with heroics.  His duty had been served.  There was an album to work on.

If… Toki would leave his room.  Which he wouldn’t.  Wouldn’t hang out with them, wouldn’t come to dinner.  Assumably he snuck out at night to take a shit or whatever, Nathan chose not to think about it.  They’d offered him contact with Rockso, who desperately wanted to see him; no dice.  Gradually they realised that it was possible to get words out of him, randomly squeezed out of a locked tight throat, if only one or two of them were there rather than a group.  Abigail especially, who _had_ recovered well and that wasn’t fair, why was she fine and Toki… broken?  But she urged them to do it.  Sit around with him.  Make the connection.

They resolved to do this… whenever.  When they got around to it.  When they were bored.  As a result there was just about someone in there every day, but it wasn’t like constant shifts or nothing.  So it had been like, four days since Nathan had been in there, but Toki hadn’t shifted.  Nathan had gotten bored, wandered down the corridor, and closed the door quietly on the two of them, peering around in the dank, sweat and sickness smelling gloom, and tried his best to do whatever Toki wanted him to.  Or whatever he thought Toki wanted him to.  It was hard to tell, anymore.

Hence ten minutes later he was sat on the floor with all the fucking soft toys out and trying to hold Toki’s attention for more than two seconds, the guy sat like a folded board opposite him and never looking quite at what he was supposed to.  The fans had responded _in earnest_ upon Toki’s return and a particularly shitty and transparent announcement that he wasn’t doing well, and Toki had been absolutely inundated with presents.  They’d thought it would fix things, filled his room with model kits and plush toys and everything safe and warm and nice.  But nothing changed.  Fuck.  Nothing ever changed.

No, that wasn’t true.  Something changed.  The animals moved.  Nathan noticed this when he entered, that the animals had changed places, and unless Pickles or Skwisgaar had gotten creative he assumed it was Toki who had moved them.  In an act intended to encourage and embrace this, Nathan had dragged them all down onto the floor and out of every box and then pulled Toki down with him, the younger man sitting on his knees and staring past the toys as Nathan tried his best to Appreciate them, picking up one after another and inspecting it with fake enthusiasm.

“And look at this guy!  He’s… another kitty!  Blue.  Nice bow, I guess.  Real soft.  Feel that, Toki.”  He held out the plush to Toki, but when the guy didn’t seem to notice, resorted to bumping his chest with it.  “Hey.  Look.  Feel that.  It’s fuckin’ soft.”

Toki’s numb hands closed around the soft toy, holding it in the same place Nathan had shoved him and not quite looking at it.  “Yeh,” he said in the smallest voice, and Nathan frowned at him.

“Well, it is.  Jeez, you’re so ungrateful.  Some kids would kill to have so many stuffed animals,” he grumbled, impatient, but Toki didn’t respond. Nathan’s huge heart dropped in the silence that followed, felt like it would fossilise, and he gave a short sigh and plunged an arm into the soft toys.

“Look at all this shit.  Man, some of these are awesome,” he commented, turfing aside sharks and elephants and tigers and snakes and monkeys, “Fuckin… hey!  Godzilla!”

The Godzilla plush toy was very round, more of a fluffy lizard ball than a kaiju, and a deep dark moss green.  It barely looked like Godzilla except in the way that Godzilla was unmistakeable, and Nathan fucking loved it.

“Godzilla,” he said, holding it up to Toki.  The Norwegian looked at Godzilla, but not at Nathan, and seemed resigned to his helplessness.  Nathan frowned at him, and put Godzilla on his lap hesitantly.  It rolled off onto the floor before them.

“Uhh… okay.  What else is here?  There’s a whole… buncha these Japanese monsters, man.  You’re spoilt,” he said, drawing similar plushes from the pile; a three-headed dragon, a snapping turtle, a grey squid-type monster with big orange eyes.  He held the last one out to Toki in a vice grip, squeezing the dumb looking thing so its eyes bugged.  “Space Amoebaaaa.”

Toki looked up from behind his dank brown hair with the shadow of a smile over his face.  “‘Pus,” he said in a rasp, and held out his hand for it.  Nathan passed it over in wonder.

“Yeah, that’s right, man.  Octopus, squid.  Like, calamari.”

Toki’s other hand was wrung into the cat toy, and he gave a faint, wavering sigh.  “Same,” he said, holding the two together, and Nathan’s frown grew deeper.  Somehow, Toki had become more stupid for his trauma.

“Uh… no… but whatever, I guess.”  A pussy wasn’t always a cat, either, but the underlying concept was there.

“He ams friends with… him.”  Toki dropped the cat and reached for a large, floppy rabbit plush, its ears as big as itself and one of the ones Nathan had noticed move in the first place.  The singer picked it up and handed it over to the guitarist, disturbed by the way it hung out of his fist like a dead animal, and Toki immediately wrapped both his arms around it, holding it to his chest.

“You like that one, huh,” observed Nathan quietly, and Toki nodded, his face brushing against the rabbit.  Nathan looked from rabbit to squid kaiju, and huffed to himself.  “Weird friends.”

“Whatsever.”

But this was progress.  Toki had talked back to him.  Nathan cast his eyes around at the sea of toys covering the floor, and rolled the Godzilla around between them with his meaty palms.  “Does the bunny got any other friends?” he asked experimentally, and Toki opened his eyes from cuddling the rabbit and squid to take in the plush masses.

“Mm… yeps… no… yeah…” Toki tossed the concept around weirdly as he sunk to cross-legged in front of Nathan, the rabbit and squid in his lap, and retrieved and discarded various toys into a pile between them.  There were quite a few - a white owl with floppy wings, a dumb-looking mint-green circular tiger, a pink giraffe, a dopey, fanged black and white bull terrier - but Toki added them and then took them away again, did this a few times, deciding, moving the animals about, but settled on those four in the inner sanctum.  Nathan rolled Godzilla into the pile and Toki consented to its addition, moving it to the top with a mumbled, “Yeh, sure.”

One addition that Nathan did not like was a large, detailed thing with far too many legs, decked out completely in black fur, and he picked it up experimentally, the claws and stinger dropping as soft toys did and making it obvious it was supposed to be a scorpion.  Whoever had created it had added the right number of button eyes, too, the stinger itself in black vinyl.  

“Creepy,” murmured Nathan, but Toki wasn’t responding, too busy stacking toys and shuffling the squid kaiju in and out of the pile.  “Uh, he’s got some weird friends, that bunny.”

“Yeah…” sighed Toki, and Nathan returned the scorpion.  They both sat there staring at the pile a while, until Toki tentatively placed the brown floppy bunny on top - and then abruptly took it back, a few of the more circular toys bouncing off as he snatched it away.

“I change my minds, him ams got no friends,” declared Toki, throwing himself on the floor with the rabbit clutched to his chest, and Nathan frowned hard.  He was sure this was in some way figurative, and struggled in turn with it; Nathan was no good at all with this high conceptual thinking, that was why he paid Offdensen.  In… in the, uh.  In the past tense.  Paid.  Had paid.  Now he was just… fuck.

He leaned across Toki, propped up on his huge arm as he looked down at the Norwegian from above, his dark hair falling in curtains around his square face.  “Uh, Toki.  You know, you got lots of friends, right?  You got lotsa… pals, and fans, and like… girls and stuff.  Here for you.”

Toki opened his eyes to look at Nathan a moment, and then turned his head aside without a word.  Nathan thought perhaps he was on the wrong track, making that assumption, and then realised that Twinkletits had told them specifically not to get in Toki’s face after everything and drew back, a swampy guilt flooding over him.  “Sorry,” he grunted, and Toki said nothing, wouldn’t look at him, seemed grey somehow in his pallid complexion.

They stayed in silence, and then Toki said, “I wants to be alone, now,” his hand shooting out to the pile and snagging the scorpion by the back.  Nathan rumbled unhappily.

“Whatever,” he growled, getting to his feet, but Toki had finished speaking.  As he moved to the door, Toki ditched the scorpion again, and grabbed the Godzilla instead, squeezing it viciously in his fist.

“Catch you later,” mumbled Nathan, casting a look back from the doorway, but Toki just gazed into the kaiju and squashed it in his hand.  And Nathan took his leave.

 

\- - - - -

 


End file.
